As seen in my loneliness, there was this difference between the Bible and the newspapers. The one reminded one that, apart from God, my life was but … - Henry Morton Stanley

When I was on the Congo and accused a tribe of cannibalism, it replied : "We are not cannibals, but our neighbors are." The neighboring tribe said : "It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet" ; and that tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt as to the existence of the practice. It was very seldom that I could discover the guilty. How, then, in recruiting its troops, was the Congo to distinguish the black cannibals from those who were not cannibals?

To-day, with its forests pierced and open, its routes, its stations, it is in advance of all other African States. Take the French Congo, the German East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, and compare them. The Congo State prospers in a greater degree than any other part of the black continent.

I crossed Africa from East to West and from West to East, and I never saw any excesses committed. I do not think that from this point of view there is a single sovereign living who has done so much for humanity as Leopold II."